Crossed: A Tale of the Fourth Crusade

Thursday

Apr 3, 2008 at 2:00 AMApr 3, 2008 at 11:00 PM

When Nicole Galland decides to write historical fiction, she doesn’t mess around. Quick, name all the work you’ve read about the Fourth Crusade, launched in the year 1202. Yeah, me too. But after emerging from her novel, Crossed: A Tale of the Fourth Crusade, all 672 pages of it (including an author’s note, the author’s biography, a brief background on the writing of the novel, an interview with the author, and suggested discussion questions), I’m ready to choose "The Fourth Crusade" if I ever get on Jeopardy. All thanks to Ms. Galland and this engrossing and highly entertaining novel.

Michael Lee

By Nicole Galland Harper, New York, 2008 Trade paperback, 672 pgs, $15.95 When Nicole Galland decides to write historical fiction, she doesn’t mess around. Quick, name all the work you’ve read about the Fourth Crusade, launched in the year 1202. Yeah, me too. But after emerging from her novel, Crossed: A Tale of the Fourth Crusade, all 672 pages of it (including an author’s note, the author’s biography, a brief background on the writing of the novel, an interview with the author, and suggested discussion questions), I’m ready to choose “The Fourth Crusade” if I ever get on Jeopardy. All thanks to Ms. Galland and this engrossing and highly entertaining novel. The years leading up to and including 1202 were dreadfully serious around the known world. Leave it to this Martha’s Vineyard resident not to succumb to the era’s solemnity, however, and give us a snapshot in time that is stocked with great characters, believable action, and enough ribaldry to call to mind T. C. Boyle’s hysterical debut novel years ago, Water Music. The novel opens in Venice where a large army is being assembled from the corners of Europe to go to Jerusalem and free the city from the iron hand of Muslim occupation. Funny how history repeats itself. The army sets sail with an assortment of knights, squires, and anyone else who can lift a weapon. And some that won’t, such as a mysterious troubadour who is called “The Briton” who seems dedicated only to bringing about his own suicide as repentance for an unnamed disgrace. Also stepping into the spotlight is Gregor of Mainz, a knight from Germany, along with his brother Otto, a prostitute named Liliana, an alleged Arab princess named Jamilia, and an assortment of characters including Boniface, the handsome Marquis of Montferrat (Gregor’s father-in-law), Barzizza, the dried fish mogul, and Enrico Dandolo, the Doge of Venice. Galland has a marvelous facility for making her characters quirky and unpredictable without lapsing into the well-trammeled Monty Python territory. She does it so well, the reader might think this is one of the easier tricks in fiction, but Galland’s sense of balance between outright slapstick and believability is rendered with a deft and professional touch. It’s no cinch to pull off. “I was astonished by what met my eyes. Astonished, and awed – here was Gregor of Mainz in his full rage and glory as the fighting animal he had been trained to be. I only realized that it was Gregor because an admiring crowd had stopped pummeling one another to form a ring around him and his attackers, and they were chanting his name.” Galland never shirks from the savagery of those times, nor its consequences. Yet her sense of context is remarkable. While Gregor is the type of hero we meet so often in these kinds of epics, there is nothing one-dimensional about him. He is not only flawed, but has a sense of humor about himself. And those characters who don’t are the target of Galland’s sharp eye. You might suspect that this Fourth Crusade will not go off without a hitch, and you’d be right. As historian David McCullough has shown us time and time again, history is cyclical and sure to repeat itself. In Galland’s novel, the best intentions of men, indeed of armies, frequently fall awry. In Crossed, the plan was to liberate Jerusalem, but running short of money, the army grudgingly sacks the city of Zara and then encircles Constantinople. This Christian versus Christian fighting in the overwhelming of Zara doesn’t settle well with some and therein lies the folly and dichotomy of men and war, no matter what the era. Nancy Galland has achieved something special in Crossing, and despite its girth, readers would well be invested in joining her characters in the Fourth Crusade. Michael Lee of Wellfleet is a member of the National Book Critics Circle Published Date: 4/4/08